Remember that chick you used to date the one day seemed to magically "remember" that her next door neighbor used to finger pop her while he watched football back in the day and because of those repressed memories flooding into her brain you are now required to no longer watch football?

Well, it turns out that you might have actually been right when you called her a lying cunt desperate to make it all about her...

The idea that traumatized people, especially the victims of child sexual abuse, deliberately repress horrific memories goes all the way back to the 19th century and the theories of Sigmund Freud himself. But it turns out that thanks to the work of a few brave researchers, this long help belief of psychology may be going the way of the dodo bird.

Professor Grant Devilly, of the Griffith University Psychological Research unit, is working tirelessly to prove that there might be no such thing as a repressed traumatic memory.

"It's the opposite. They wish they couldn't think about it," he said.

And Prof. Devilly is not alone as he pisses in the face of contemporary psychology...

In a briefing to the US Supreme Court, Professor Richard McNally from Harvard University described the theory of repressed memory as "the most pernicious bit of folklore ever to infect psychology and psychiatry".

He maintains false memories can easily be created by inept therapists.

"The stress hormones that are released during a trauma tend to consolidate the memory, make it rather strong and sometimes even intrusive, as you see in post-traumatic stress disorder," he said.

Memories... at the corner of my mind...

Now, all this bagging on the idea of memory repression is not to say that the reliving of traumatic memories does not affect the victim.

"Seeing the event through the eyes of adult, they realize what has happened to them and now they experience the emotional turmoil of trauma," states Prof. McNally.

It just means that these memories are not buried deep in the recesses of the mind, laying in wait to be sprung from its brain matter hide-a-way.

While both of the researchers question the validity of traumatic memory repression, one thing they both seem to agree upon is the vast improvements having come in the treatment of these memories and experiences.

"Things have changed, happily. We now have treatments that work," Prof. McNally said.

Soldiers returning from war zones, victims of violent crime and sexual abuse, can now be helped by cognitive behavior therapy, where they learn to assign terrible memories to the past, instead of them crowding their present and future.

Professor Devilly says the therapy is working.

"We're now getting, at the end of between 8 and 12 sessions, 90 to 92 per cent of people no longer meet the criteria for PTSD."

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What Do You Think

Gay Marriage....

Is too important an issue for the Government to leave to the hands of the people... Should be a state's rights issue where the voice of the people will be heard... Isn't going to matter a hill of beans once the Chinese roll their tanks down the Pacific Coast Highway...